WHILE TRAVELLING TO THE U.S IN THE SUMMER I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY WITH MEET WITH DAN DE JONGH, THE CREATOR AND JOURNALIST OF DISCIPLINE MAG. DAN HAS BEEN A LONG TIME FIGURE IN THE INDUSTRIAL/ EXPERIMENTAL ART AND MUSIC SCENE, ADVOCATING AND PROMOTING THE UNDERGROUND SCENE FOR MANY YEARS, PREDOMINANTLY THROUGH HIS ONLINE PUBLICATION WHICH HAS GAINED CONSIDERABLE ATTENTION AMONG ARTISTS AND FANS. WHILE DISCUSSING THE CURRENT STATE OF INDUSTRIAL MUSIC OVER DINNER IN BROOKLYN IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT A BETTER WAY TO BRING ATTENTION TO PURVEYORS OF INDUSTRIAL ART LIKE DAN WAS TO CONDUCT AND INTERVIEW IN WHICH HE CAN EXPLAIN IN DETAIL HIS ORIGINS, PHILOSOPHY AND IDEAS ABOUT UNDERGROUND CULTURE. THIS WILL BE THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS OF THE NEXT 3 YEARS. PLEASE ENJOY.
- What was your first experience with underground/experimental music?
That would take me back to 2009 to an amateur show in London, but I think the lead-up to that moment is also important. I spent much of my youth captivated with music, discovering new genres, researching artists, and obsessively buying CDs. I had a familiar journey from punk to metal and kind of settled on death metal, but I think that was born out of this juvenile idea that death metal represented some kind of end point of extremity, rather than genuinely feeling content. Around this time I started to gain an interest in slightly stranger, more left-of-field music, but still within arms reach of flagship metal genres. Some examples being post-metal from Neurosis and Isis, Mike Patton’s weirder and heavier bands like Fantômas and Mr. Bungle, progressive jam-out stuff like The Mars Volta, I was a little familiar with some of John Zorn’s Naked City, and I also listened to a lot of contemporary industrial music like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. Through these artists, I was slowly learning that music had less boundaries than I was initially led to believe, but I didn’t have the vocabulary or grounding in the experimental music sound world to properly understand this yet. Funnily enough, gateway artists like Throbbing Gristle (et al.) were right around the corner from classic punk or Nine Inch Nails, but it would be years out of my teens before I discovered that world.
Fast forward to 2009 and I’m 20 years old and living out of home for the first time in London. My friend from Australia who happened to move to London around the same time played guitar in a band, and naturally I’d go to most of their gigs. They proudly declared themselves a “hard rock” band and I really cannot put into words how much I detested them. Everything from their complete wank of a sound and derivative virtuosity. It hurt my soul seeing them so often, but they were also friends and it came paired with me “hitting the town” so I just had to suck it up for the sake of having a social life.
This one night they played a battle of the bands gig at a venue at UCL in Central London. The premise was this: a few bands would play, and once they were finished the judges would measure the decibels from the crowd’s applause at the end, and whoever had the loudest crowd reaction won that night’s competition and progressed to the next stage. My friend’s band brought everyone they knew to come down and lend their tonsils at the end of the show. They got huge screams from all their friends, including from me, but I think it was out of frustration more than anything else, ha ha.
After they finished, on came a group of androgynous looking Japanese guys who I knew nothing about. I was immediately struck by their presentation – they had long, perfectly straight hair almost as far down as their buttocks, they were all incredibly skinny, but they were wearing really long and over-sized shirts that went down most of their bodies. The band was Bo Ningen, and much of the crowd had dispersed for their show, from memory there may have been like 10 people left to watch them. They started playing and there was a complete barrage of intense and fragmented sounds. They were using conventional rock instruments, but it was a sonic bathing unlike anything I had experienced before. It felt raw and structureless, but also calculated, or at least that they knew what they wanted out of the performance. I think it would have been the first time where I felt like the intent behind the band’s delivery mattered more than the specifics of what they were doing.
I imagine it was dismissed as a noisy mess by most of the crowd, but even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was witnessing, I recognised that in order to deliver the wall of sound and visceral vocal performance that they did, it required a great deal of skill and dedication to their craft. At that stage, I only had metal and punk as reference points, and I struggled to place the band. I was like – that was more intense than any metal show I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t metal, so how can that be?? I just couldn’t comprehend it. I spent the rest of the evening trying to talk endlessly to everyone there about the show, what I had witnessed, and the genres they may or may not fall under. Tacitly undermining my friend’s band in the process – ha!
At the end of their set, I was hyper-aware that they were being judged by the decibels of the audience and I wanted them to win. I felt so stupid that I had screamed for my friend’s band and tried desperately to bring the volume and encouraged as many people as possible to do the same. It was like that scene from Big Daddy – “we wasted the good surprise on you” – it felt like I’d wasted the good screaming on my friend’s band. But they won in the end, and I’m of the belief it was a blessing because the competition was beneath Bo Ningen.
- Can you provide a brief background of Discipline Mag and its role. What was your initial idea for the publication?
I came up with the idea a couple of years after moving to Melbourne, Australia. Before Melbourne I’d been living in Hong Kong, a city which I have a deep sentimental connection to, but for someone who values music and music experiences so fundamentally, I found it to be culturally lacking in this respect. Melbourne on the other hand is widely regarded as a “cultural capital” (a term I rarely use unironically, but it fits here) and is home to lots of venues, bands and music scenes. I was compulsively seeing bands and performances from the moment I arrived in 2017, and in a way, I was making up for a perceived loss of time after Hong Kong.
It was also around this era (early-mid 2010s onwards) that I was obsessed with researching every corner possible that related to experimental underground music, particularly early industrial through to various flavours of noise/experimental music. I found that this obsession was increasingly leaving me culturally isolated amongst my friend circles who often opted for music that was synonymous with *having a good time* rather than anything that was challenging or less immediate (more on this in the Australia section). I knew that there was a big wide world of musically and subculturally aligned people out there, but it was up to me to find it.
I was also a keen reader of Pitchfork, The Quietus and various smaller online resources around that time. I was reading reviews, interviews and music news on a daily basis. What frustrated me was that – while my interests were being referenced on occasion, I wasn’t seeing the kind of content that I wanted, and I felt like few resources were actively covering this. I had this sense that if you peeled the lid back just a little bit, a lot of prominent musicians and fans did actually feel passionate about these experimental spaces, but it wasn’t being covered enough. So I guess the genesis came from a combination of this lack of coverage, combined with my compulsive gig attendances in Melbourne, which led me to feeling like perhaps I actually did have at least some authority that would warrant me taking on such a role as a “music journalist”, or “cultural chronicler” or whatever label you’d put on it.
Initially, I wanted video to be a big part of it all. Not necessarily bedroom YouTube videos, but subcultural exploration from unlikely places. The “discipline” both being both a reference to unconventional music and masochistic travel destinations like Asian mega cities or under-developed African countries. I’m a sucker for pain in many aspects of my life, and I’m sure depictions of my own suffering alongside music exploration in unfamiliar locations would make for great entertainment. Alas, Covid happened, so Discipline Mag, which was created around the end of 2019, had to quickly adapt to the new domestic reality of 2020.
- How do you think underground music has helped you on a personal/emotional level and how do you think it benefits others?
On a personal level, as counter-intuitive as this sounds, I think this insane music has kind of helped keep me sane. Everyone needs purpose, interests or a set of beliefs. That might be parenthood, career, a band, religion or anything else. While some of those apply to myself, I’ve also found a sense of purpose with Discipline Mag. Sometimes I destroy myself with the volume of work required to keep this thing going, but I generally get really positive feedback from people and even admiration at times, so hearing from people that you’re doing what you initially intended to do, as haphazard as it feels, is really meaningful and motivating.
As for others, that’s quite subjective and I’m not sure I can confidently answer. But I would have to give a cliche’d answer and use the dreaded c-word: community. I’m sure there are misfits out there who have found solace with others through their shared interest in avant-garde music culture. Conversely, I think there are more normies (not a disparaging word) in the noise scene than most people would think. Perhaps the dichotomy between regular day-to-day life and bizarre or shocking experimentalism is therapeutic or cathartic somehow. But again, I’m speaking in generalisations here so it’s possible I’m way off.
- What do you love, and what do you hate about noise music?
What I love is the capacity for excess. I’ve always pushed things too far, and so free-form/experimental/noise music seems to naturally align with my character. And I also love the commitment many people have for the genre. Not many people “get it”, but those that do tend to be really passionate about it.
And what do I hate? When the spirit of excess becomes predictable or when the shocking themes become forced. More than other music, noise music is about the sentiment, and when it starts to feel disingenuous or lazy, that’s when I tap out.
- What is your experience with sound/music in Australia?
The Australian musical palette tends to focus on music that is synonymous with having a good time, which is something I struggle with. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been going to music festivals since my early teens and I do enjoy having a bit of a blow out at a festival or event from time to time. But having fun and keeping the beers flowing is the central premise for a lot of music in Australia and, from a cultural and creative standpoint, it seriously bores me.
Leading on from this, Australia isn’t always the best for experimental music, but this would also be partly attributed to population size as people are passionate about their respective, non-experimental, music interests. And there are definitely a committed few in Melbourne and Sydney who do some cool stuff. Furthermore, Australia does have a small place in experimental music history through acts like SPK, JG Thirlwell, John Murphy, certain eras of Nick Cave etc.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most profound experiences I’ve had in Australia have tended to involve foreign artists. But there are some cool and unique events that happen here. The annual Dark Mofo festival in Hobart, Tasmania tends to bring a wide range of darker music, and always includes at least a few impressive experimental artists (as well as a killer metal event). I’ve only been once in 2018, but it was an incredible experience. The entire city of Hobart becomes part of the event; there are installations, galleries, and shows everywhere and at all times, all in the dead of winter. It’s the brainchild of David Walsh who also opened an incredibly grand museum called MONA which has brought a whole new lease of life to Tasmania. Walsh made his fortune as a professional gambler, which is another wild aspect of his story. Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten at one point said he planned on playing the festival every year. When I went in 2018 some of the best experimental artists I saw were William Basinski and Merzbow. It was the best Merzbow set I’ve seen and the atmosphere was completely on point.
Also, the creator of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival is Australian. ATP was a cool concept and had some very noisy/experimental lineups when curated by the right people, I think Sonic Youth curated one of the best lineups. I only ever attended a sister event, I’ll Be Your Mirror, in London in 2012. But generally speaking, my most treasured memories around noise/experimental music would have taken place abroad. The point I’m circling around here is that while people are definitely passionate about these spaces in Australia, it tends to require a move abroad to do something meaningful or to experience the pinnacle of what these scenes have to offer.